Q Toon: Exceptionalism

The House is expected to vote this week on the Equality Act sponsored by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to extend its protections to LGBTQ citizens. President Biden has vowed that signing it into law is one of the first priorities of his administration.

But first, it has to get through the U.S. Senate.

Requblicans object to the bill, claiming that it discriminates against religious people's belief in discriminating against LGBTQ people. They have also raised fears that men in sports will rush to transition to female in order to put women in sports at a competitive disadvantage, or at least to get into the ladies' locker room. And of course, everybody's bathrooms.

Democrats and Requblicans are evenly split in the Senate, and Vice President Kamala Harris could vote in the case of a tie. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) was a co-sponsor of the Equality Act in 2019, in case you'd still like to get your unrealistic hopes up for her again. But there doesn't appear to be much likelihood of any other Requblicans supporting the bill; Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rob Portman (R-OH) aren't making any promises, and Mitt Romney (R-UT) declared his opposition just last week.

Since, under current rules, any bill needs to have the support of 60 senators in order to get anywhere, Requblicans can filibuster the Equality Act without lifting a finger. Almost literally. We tend to think of a filibuster as involving some senator speaking for hours on end until he/she collapses from exhaustion. Nowadays, all it takes is 40 votes against a motion to close debate. Actual debate need not even follow.

There used to be a saying that the Senate was the saucer in which the overheated soup from the House was allowed to cool. Now the Senate is the arctic vortex that freezes the whole bowl of soup, a plate of lasagna, a bunch of bananas and the rest of the whole damned kitchen into an impenetrable block of ice.

Q Toon: John Lewis

So many cartoons eulogizing Congressman John Lewis have focused on his work to advance the cause of civil rights for Black Americans. He was also in the vanguard of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, so I hope you will excuse yet one more drawing of him and that bridge.

Today's cartoon quotes from a column Congressman Lewis wrote in the October 25, 2003 edition of  the Boston Globe, "At a Crossroads on Gay Unions."

The column itself cribs extensively from a floor speech Lewis gave in the House of Representatives against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, way back in 1996:

"Marriage is a basic human right. You cannot tell people they cannot fall in love. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to say, of people talking about interracial marriages, I quote: 'Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married.' Why don't you want your fellow men and women, your fellow Americans, to be happy? Why do you attack them? Why do you want to destroy the love they hold in their hearts? Why do you want to crush their hopes, their dreams, their loves, their aspirations? ...
I fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color [not] to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I've known racism. I've known bigotry. This bill stinks to the same fear, hatred and intolerance."

This is the kind of thing that earned him the sobriquet "The Conscience of the House." LGBTQ+ rights have come a long way since 1996: in spite of Lewis's speech, 118 Democrats joined 224 Republicans in voting for that odious bill. Only 65 Democrats and one Republican voted against it. (Two Democrats voted "present"; 22 Democrats and nine Republicans missed the vote.)

Many state legislators showed the same willingness to knuckle under to antigay bigotry as one state after another passed its own version of DOMA. And that included many legislators who claimed to be straight allies of the LGBTQ+ community.

Lewis ended his column in the Boston Globe on much the same note as his 1996 floor speech:

"Rather than divide and discriminate, let us come together and create one nation. We are all one people. We all live in the American house. We are all the American family."  

QToon: Balls and Strikes

"Judges are like umpires.... I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability, and I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat." —John Roberts, at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, September 12, 2005

Brian Brown, the president of the antigay National Organization for Marriage and World Congress of Families, recently tweeted a photo of himself and and leaders of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith posing with Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito.

Since the Supremes have taken up three LGBTQ+ rights cases this year, a liberal advocacy group, Take Back the Court, is demanding that Kavanaugh and Alito recuse themselves from them.

The Supreme Court has become deeply politicized in recent years, thanks to a series of rulings like Shelby County v. Holder, Citizens United, and Rucho v. Common Cause that have undermined basic tenets of our democracy for partisan advantage. The successful and unprecedented efforts by political branches to manipulate the size of the court for partisan purposes and your behavior, Justice Kavanaugh, during your confirmation hearings, have only deepened concerns about the politicization of the court. Your decision to meet privately with an activist who has filed amicus briefs with the court in three pending cases seems to confirm the worst fears of his critics.

The public letter from Take Back the Court director Aaron Belkin concludes:

The credibility and impartiality of the current Supreme Court is in tatters. Posing for photographs with the president of an advocacy organization that has filed briefs in matters pending before the court makes a mockery of Chief Justice Roberts’ assertion that a judge’s role is to impartially call balls and strikes. If you refuse to recuse yourselves, this incident will further illustrate the urgent need for structural reform of the Supreme Court in order to restore a Court that understands its role is to protect individual rights and our democracy.

Brown's NOM has filed amicus briefs in the cases before the Court, urging the Justices to rule that employers have every right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ employees, applicants, and customers. Given how nominees to the Court these days bend themselves into human pretzels trying to avoid answering any question that might someday be relevant to a matter before the Court, it is at least curious that Kavanaugh and Alito would choose to grant such an ex parte photo op.

Recusals of Supreme Court Justices are not so uncommon as you might think. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from dozens of cases — 28 in her first year on the Court — because as Solicitor General, she had been counsel in some of the litigation of those cases. Sandra Day O’Connor removed herself from cases regarding telecommunications firms because of stocks she owned. Clarence Thomas recused himself from United States v. Virginia because his son was enrolled at The Virginia Military Institute.

Whether and how Thomas's wife's work as a conservative activist impacts his supposed judicial impartiality is a whole other issue; in his three decades on the Court, he hasn't recused himself from any LGBTQ+ cases to my knowledge.

After all, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and for that matter Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts were put on the Court to be conservative judicial activists. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has been determined to load state and federal courts with their loyal soldiers since Nixon was president, such as Lawrence VanDyke, whom I drew about last week.

If they recused themselves from every liberal v. conservative case, they wouldn't be doing the job they were trained, groomed, and hired to do.

Q Toon: About that U.N. Speech

Since I just got back home from a two-week vacation last weekend, I've got some catching up to do.

I don't know what the coverage of Donald Trump's speech at the United Nations on September 24 was like here in the states; in the reports I saw in Spain, whatever he said was overshadowed by Greta Thunberg's glare as he walked past her in the foyer.

I got the impression from European media that the topic du jour was climate change, but Trump (or his speech writers) never got the memo. Instead, he rattled on about what a great leader he is. Then he slipped in the sentence in panel one of this week's cartoon.

This idea of convincing antigay regimes around the world to stop persecuting their LGBTQ+ citizens has been credited to Trump's Ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell. That Trump has taken up the cause while advocating against LGBTQ+ rights before our Supreme Court has baffled many observers.

Since the United Nations hadn't packed the room with knuckle-dragging maniacs from Trump campaign rallies, the audience failed to hoot and holler agreement with Mr. Stable Genius's great and unmatched wisdom. If he had had a more receptive audience, I have no doubt that Trump would have veered off his off-topic speech and let his id run wild and perhaps revealed that the true motivation behind his gay rights initiative had nothing whatsoever to do with concern for oppressed LGBTQ+ folks around the world.

Q Toon: June 28, 1969

This June marks the 50-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, generally regarded as one of the key turning points in the gay liberation movement (as it was called before we became an unpronounceable acronym).

For anyone needing to catch up, New York police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, at 1:20 a.m. on June 28, 1969. Typically, these raids netted a dozen or so humiliated gays, lesbians, transsexuals or transvestites ("transgender" not yet being in common parlance) hoping against hope to keep their names and photos out of the newspaper.

But whether it was the weather, or the death of Judy Garland, or Canada having just decriminalized homosexuality, or Freddy Mercury in retrograde, the customers of the Stonewall decided not to go quietly. They refused to cooperate with the police, who then announced that they would arrest everyone in the bar. A crowd gathered as the police waited for additional paddy wagons to arrive; police escalated their use of force, and the riot began. And lasted through the weekend, flaring up anew on Wednesday in response to insulting reportage in The Village Voice.

Today's cartoon would have taken place in a relatively quiet moment.

So, then, how far have we come in the half century thence?

LGBTQ actors are much freer to be out and open about their sexuality than their counterparts fifty years ago; and films about us do not consistently portray us as doomed social misfits who die unloved and unmourned by the final reel.

Marriage equality was hardly on anybody's radar in 1969. Keeping one's job and staying out of jail were more pressing issues. The burden is now on the religious right as they fight to restore for themselves the privilege of being able to discriminate against us in employment, housing, and health and public services.

With the war in Vietnam becoming increasingly unpopular, military service wasn't a hot issue for the gay liberation movement, either. But there were nevertheless those at the time whose career calling was in the military; and in spite of failed half-measures such as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," sexual orientation is no longer an automatic bar to military service and advancement. Whether the Corrupt Trump Administration's current regressive policies prove to be a temporary setback or not remains to be seen.

I'd still rate Pete Buttigieg as a long shot to be inaugurated president on January 20, 2020, but taking his candidacy seriously at all would have been inconceivable in 1969. Still, our prescient perp overlooks the fact that other countries have or have had openly LGBTQ heads of state in the 21st Century. And none of them have been consumed by fire or brimstone.

The tendency toward finding community in urban centers has concentrated our political power there and in the one political party left with concern for urban issues. It has, unfortunately, contributed to the acreage advantage the other political party has to diminish our influence on a state and national scale by the gerrymander, and to disregard the Log Cabineers, GOProudsters, and Caitlyn Jenners along its fringe.

Flexing its legislative, financial and current executive muscle, that political party has spent the past fifty years stacking the courts with reactionary activists, so this is no time to trust that progress made will be progress kept.

Q Toon: Pinklining

Neither Donald Trump nor Roseanne Barr have anything to do with this week's cartoon, so most of you may require a bit of explanation.

On May 16, fifteen-term Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher told a delegation from the Orange County Association of Realtors that “Every homeowner should be able to make a decision not to sell their home to someone [if] they don’t agree with their lifestyle.”

The delegation had come to him to ask him to support HR 1447, which would expand the 1968 Fair Housing Act to add anti-discrimination protections based on a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity. The existing law already forbids home sellers, landlords and lenders from discrimination based on a person’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

The National Association of Realtors' lobbying and campaign arm has been a strong backer of Rohrabacher in the past, but once his remarks were made public by a former Orange County Realtor president, the NAR announced withdrawal of their support.

“It was determined that Rep. Rohrabacher will no longer receive support from National Association of Realtors’s President’s Circle,” an association statement said, referring to its list of recommended candidates. Rohrabacher’s stance, the 1.3-million-member trade group said, is contrary to NAR’s code of ethics, which bans discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Previously Rohrabacher had been designated as a “Realtor Champion,” eligible for support from top Realtor donors.

Rohrabacher has a long anti-LGBTQ record. He voted to keep the military Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and consistently against workplace protections for LGBTQ citizens. He repeatedly voted for the Defense of Marriage Act and the Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution to exclude same-sex couples from the right to marry. Having lost that fight, he has advocated not having federal recognition of any marriages whatsoever.

Six Republicans, four Democrats, a Libertarian and an independent are running against Rohrabacher this fall. (Four other candidates will appear on the primary ballot, although they have unofficially withdrawn from the race.) It's a strongly Republican district, but given California's electoral system in which the top two vote-getters in a general primary, regardless of their party affiliation, face off against each other in the general election, anything could happen.

Still, I strongly suspect that the shtick Mr. Rohrabacher has been selling in southern California since the 1980's will meet growing skepticism from the voters born since then.

50 Years After MLK

When I found out that in his blog on Wednesday, Mike Peterson was going to display editorial cartoons drawn upon the assassination 50 years ago this week of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I seriously considered shelving my plans to do the same today.

But I had already begun the project; and really, what topic more deserves a trip in the wayback machine this week?

"The Nation Is Shamed — Again" by "T.S." in Washington Afro-American, Washington, D.C., April 9, 1968

I'll start with two examples I found in the African-American press. Many of the editorial cartoons in the Afro-American were left unsigned, but this one (and eventually several more in the 1970s and 80s) is signed with the initials "T.S." I believe "T.S" is Ted Shearer, most famous for creating the comic strip Quincy in 1970; Tim Jackson's Pioneering Cartoonists of Color is the only reference I have found to mention specifically his having drawn editorial cartoons. Shearer did draw for the Afro-American before launching Quincy, so until someone tells me otherwise, I'll credit this one to him.

Surely Dr. King's legacy influenced King Features' decision to syndicate Shearer's comic strip centered on Black American children in an un-whitewashed urban setting.

"Leadership..." by Robert S. Pious for Continental Features, April, 1968

Robert Savon Pious, in addition to drawing for pulp magazines, posters and WPA murals, had an established a career drawing editorial cartoons for the African-American press since the 1930s. His memorial cartoon here attempts to sum up Dr. King's life in images and brief quotations, and one can only imagine how difficult emotionally it must have been for Pious to draw it. (Regrettably, The Indianapolis Recorder cropped this cartoon rather poorly, and there is an unfortunate typo in the cut line.)

"Civil Rights Report" by Herblock in Washington Post, April, 1968

So, on to the white guys.

In those first days of April, 1968, editorial cartoonists must have felt inundated by the monumentally important news events cascading one after another. You may have become numb to the barrage of earthshaking news we feel on a minute-by-minute basis every day of the Corrupt Trump Administration in which this morning's lead story is this afternoon's sidebar; but 1968 was before the age of Twitter, or 24-hour news channels propelling the national conversation.

"Below Olympus" by Frank Interlandi in Los Angeles Times, April, 1968

President Johnson had gone on TV on March 31 to announce a halt to U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and also that he would not run for reelection. The first was to bolster peace talks, still foundering on the shape of the negotiating table at that point; the second threw the presidential race wide open. Students across the nation were protesting against racial discrimination and the war; an occupation of  college officials' offices at Bowie State College in Baltimore had just ended. A group of white students at the University of St. Thomas in Houston had organized themselves as a barrier to protect black protesters on college campuses from hostile police. In Congress, Conservative Southern Democrats, Goldwater Republicans, and real estate lobbyists were trying to block the Fair Housing Act.

And Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King announced that he would return to Memphis meet with strategists of the Garbage Collectors' strike and business boycott, in spite of violence having broken out while he was there to march in support of the sanitation workers on March 28. People started breaking windows, and in the police response, a 16-year-old was fatally shot and 62 were injured. From the April 2 edition (above) of The Washington Afro-American:

Dr. King, admitting a mistake had been made when he joined the march without having done some intelligence work or brought in staffers to control the violent element declared:
"Riots are here. Riots are part of the ugly atmosphere of our society now."

"What So Proudly We Hailed—" by Reginald Manning in Arizona Republic, April, 1968

After King's assassination, riots and looting broke out in several cities across the nation at once, including Washington D.C; Columbia, South Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; Macon, Georgia; Detroit, Michigan; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Chicago, Illinois. That Sunday, a white gunman named Norris Edwards burst into a black church in Indianapolis and began firing at parishioners, killing three. Many cities imposed curfews on their citizens, including my hometown. (I was 8 years old at the time, old enough to imagine from media coverage that marauding hordes might come charging over the hill and down my dead end suburban street any minute.)

"Note to Congress" by Jack Knox in Nashville Banner, April 6, 1968

While some cartoonists' first response after King's assassination was to decry the riots, a more hopeful theme was repeated among others wishing to focus more on Dr. King's legacy.

"His Truth Goes Marching On—" by Lou Grant in Los Angeles Times, April, 1968

"...But His Truth Is Marching On..." by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, April, 1968

Since my source for Hugh Haynie's cartoon is a little out of focus, I'll note that the printing on the man's sleeve identifies him as "Dr. King."

"His Spirit Marches On" by Cy Hungerford in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 6, 1968

From the vantage point of 50 years later, it seems curious that these three white cartoonists would all reference the same poem written by a white woman, yet I could find only two cartoons which quoted Dr. King himself. (Mike Peterson's post includes two others that refer to the "I Have a Dream" speech; but although we have posted a few cartoons in common, I am not copying cartoons from his post.)

"NOW!" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, April, 1968

As tragic as Dr. King's assassination and the ensuing urban violence were, they succeeded in bringing a sense of urgency to the need for progress in racial justice in the United States that some had refused to acknowledge.

"The Time Has Come to Face the Challenge" by Dan Dowling in Kansas City Star, April, 1968

On April 5, President Johnson sent Congress a strongly worded letter (cited in the Jack Knox cartoon above) demanding passage of the Fair Housing Act. Also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1968, it passed on April 10 with provisions making it a federal crime to interfere with anyone's civil rights. Its main aim was to add federal enforcement provisions to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and to explicitly prohibit discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, national origin, or religion.

"More Lasting than Flowers" by Bill Crawford in Newark News, April, 1968

Q Toon: Tow Be Or Not Tow Be

A presidential election is not the only thing you can look forward to in 2016. ("Look forward"? It's been underway for over a year already. Perhaps "Look around." But I digress.)

On many Republican-ruled state agendas are "religious liberty" proposals to create gaping loopholes in civil rights laws. Loopholes you could drive a tow truck through.

The stated aim of "religious liberty" laws is to excuse anyone who cites religion from having to respect the civil rights of someone else — by which they mean LGBT folks. Religious institutions already have that exemption. Don't expect the pastor at a WELS church to marry Giuseppe and Miryam, or to rent them Luther Hall for the reception.

"Religious liberty" legislation opens up the loophole to everybody else. While a gay couple in Atlanta can probably find someone to bake them a wedding cake that is just as good or better than the baker whose religious sensibilities might be offended by the prospect, that might not be true for a gay couple in McCaysville.

"Religious liberty" can be cited as an excuse for damn near anything, not just wedding cakes and reception halls — see Pat Bagley's cartoon today. Republicans write these proposed laws so broadly that anyone could cite "religious liberty" as their grounds for discriminating in housing, employment, health care, education — things the religious libertine no doubt takes for granted for him or herself.

Q Toon: This He Said, And Nothing More

As Marylanders have been preparing to vote on a referendum to overturn their state's marriage equality law, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo spoke out strongly against the measure back in March.

"Gay and lesbian couples want to marry for similar reasons as we all do: love and commitment. It’s time to allow them the opportunity to build a family through marriage. It’s a matter of fairness. This is why I’m asking Marylanders to join me in supporting marriage equality for same-sex couples.
“Having the freedom to marry means committed couples and their children will have the same crucial protections under the law as other families. Churches can always have their beliefs, but government is supposed to treat everybody the same, and that’s equal. America is supposed to be the land of the free but in order for this to be true for all of us, then we must have the ability to marry whom we love regardless of their gender."

More recently, Ayanbadejo offered two tickets to the Ravens' first home game of the season this past Monday as part of a Marylanders for Marriage Equality fund raiser. Delegate to the Maryland legislature Rev. Emmett C. Burns, Jr. (D-Baltimore County), who is also founder and pastor of Rising Sun First Baptist Church, wrote a letter to Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti expressing his outrage:

"I am requesting that you take the necessary actions as a National Football League Franchise Owner to inhibit such expressions from your employee and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions. I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing."

 Burns cc'ed his letter to the media, and has since learned of at least one other NFL player who agrees with Brendan Ayanbadejo.

"I've also been vocal as hell about the issue of gay marriage so you can take your 'I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing' and shove it in your close-minded, totally lacking in empathy piehole and choke on it. Asshole."

So wrote Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe in a very profane but otherwise quite eloquent broadside to the preacher-turned-politician-turned-censor.

 "What on earth would possess you to be so mind-boggingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person's right to speech. ...

 "'Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment, and excitement.' Holy fucking shitballs. Did you seriously just say that, as someone who's 'deeply involved in government task forces on the legacy of slavery in Maryland'? Have you not heard of Kenny Washington? Jackie Robinson? As recently as 1962 the NFL still had segregation, which was only done away with by brave athletes and coaches daring to speak their mind and do the right thing, and you're going to say that political views have 'no place in a sport'?"

It is Kluwe's letter on Deadspin that has turned this story from a local one to a national, but I've chosen to highlight the original center of controversy.

Besides, I'm a Packer fan. It's really, really, really, really, unbelievably, stupendously, insanely, Herculeanly hard to force myself to say anything nice about a Viking.

Q Toon: Meeting the Founding Fathers

Last week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vowed to veto any bill out of the state legislature extending marriage equality to same-sex couples.

When only judges had the temerity to find that the Constitution applies to gays and lesbians, conservatives would blast those "elitist judges" and call for legislatures to vote to keep homosexuals in their proper place. Now that legislative approval of marriage equality in New Jersey is all but guaranteed, the governor avers that the matter is too important to be left to the people's representatives and ought to be put to a vote of the people themselves.

My knee-jerk instinct was to draw parallels to the Black Civil Rights movement, but it seems Governor Christie has already done that:

“People would have been happy with a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets of the South.”

Likening the struggle for gay rights to other facets of the fight for civil rights, particularly for African-Americans, is debatable. Many on my side of the debate say that while the issues in both fights are not identical (I'll concede that there are more gays who are able to pass as straight than there are blacks who are able to pass as white), there are still significant similarities (you think LGBTs don't get lynched? It's called gay-bashing, and it still happens).

But out of respect for African American History Month, I decided to steer clear of that particular argument this week.

Besides, the ridiculous parallel I might have drawn had already come straight out of Christie's mouth. I'm pretty sure that referenda on civil rights would have gone down to defeat in many states in the '60's, and not just down in Dixie. I'm absolutely certain that the marriage of future President Obama's parents would have been voted down by the same caliber of people who today question his citizenship (I'm looking at you, Georgia Republicans).

This Week's Cartoon